Karl Hofer
Selbstbildnis, 1926

Alfred Flechtheim and Karl Hofer

Karl Hofer was a pupil of Hans Thoma in Karlsruhe before working in Berlin later where he became Professor of the Akademie der bildenden Künste in 1920. His work was influenced early on by Hans von Marées, among others, and Classical art that he had seen during his stay in Rome (1903–08). After that, he moved to Paris where he was captivated by the work of Paul Cézanne, in particular. He changed from his initially delicate form of art in 1919 to the Expressionist style. Hofer was principally a painter of figures and repeated the same motif in an increasing number of new variations. He worked using simplified but bold contours and offset different areas of colour. Hofer also painted landscapes (Ticino) in a strictly almost abstract fashion. He was excluded from the Prussian Academy of Arts in 1938 or rather forced to become merely a passive member. Nine of his pictures confiscated by the Nazis were offered for sale at Fischer’s in Lucerne in 1939. In 1943 Hofer’s studio was bombed and more than 150 paintings destroyed. His flat, where he carried on working, was also destroyed the following year. At the end of World War II Hofer was offered a professorship at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Berlin.

Alfred Flechtheim and Karl Hofer knew each other from Paris and met in the legendary Café du Dôme. A friendship developed between Flechtheim, who was then just a collector, and the young artist Hofer that lasted many years. After World War I – Hofer having been held as a prisoner-of-war in France for several years – his works became a permanent feature of Flechtheim’s gallery agenda. Flechtheim had the exclusive rights as the sole representative for the sale of the artist’s works and exhibited Karl Hofer’s works almost every year between 1919–1933, sometimes several times. In addition, Hofer also has solo exhibitions in 1928 and 1931.